Wednesday, 6 September 2017

My Aunt Agatha

My Aunt Agathabegan life as a short story called Aunt Agatha's Murder, which I wrote to enter in a contest with the theme "The perfect murder".

My Aunt Agatha by Sally Odgers

From general short story to a children's educational reader wasn't as big as step as you might think. In the 1980s, these readers were big on originality, and on being full bodied stories of whatever genre they might be. There was no requirement to fit them into the curriculum as anything but a book to encourage reading skill and enjoyment and to model genres and technique. In this story, the unnamed child narrator tells the story of her (probably she's a girl) aunts, Ellery and Agatha, who live together. Ellery is the boss, because she's wealthy and Agatha is not. One day, 'poor Aggie' slips on the soap and dies as a result. Aunt Ellery is devastated, but it's not long before our narrator begins to wonder if there's more to this story than meets the eye. Ellery and Agatha, you see, were identical twins.The narrator is an observer, and quite cool in her assessment of the case. She likes secrets.In its short story guise, Aunt Agatha's Murder won the contest I entered it into. You still might find the odd copy of the book version kicking around the internet.

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service.